Dual Immersion Elementary School: October 2014

We are 9 weeks into the school year. If you are just now reading. This is a blog I started about my own personal experience with a Spanish Dual Language program with the public school system. When I decided to transfer my son into this program for Kindergarten I couldn't find many stories on the net from other parents. I am not a professional educator, writer, or Spanish speaker. I'm just a mom sharing an experience. If you are from this school reading this blog know from the get go this is NOT a criticizing or negative blog. It's just my point of view and experiences thus far. I appreciate anyone who cares enough to read it.

Here we are at 9 weeks! Mason has received 3 certificates of accomplishment. First, was Student of the Weeek, Second, he got one for Good Display of Character (something like that). And this past week he got one for Perfect Attendance for the first 9 weeks. I'm working hard to keep up with everything---homework, parent nights, PTO, academic nights, dress up days, and this months community donations. This month was "Sock-tober". We donated socks.....last month was a canned food drive. Now, none of that has to do with Spanish but it is part of starting Kindergarten so I like to include some of that for moms that are interested in Kindergarten in general. I know I was. This week is Drug Awareness. Every day they have a different dress up day. Today was crazy sock day.

Mason got his first report card. Which was graded by either a S, N, or a U. (Satisfactory, Needs Improvement, Unsatisfactory). He got all S's and 2 N's. Both N's fell in the Writing and Language Arts area. It's no surprise he needs to work on his writing. He doesn't like to do it and his letters are always backwards (just certain ones) and the teacher consistently comments on he needs to work on it. Which is fine. It's her job. They use AIMSweb and GKIDS as guidelines for their grading. In case your curious and want to Google the evaluating system. As for Language Arts he couldn't identify the "I" sound for English and the "ll" sound for Spanish. I asked him over the weekend what sound the "I" makes and he could tell me. Maybe he couldn't remember at the time he was asked. Of course I wanted to read one of his letter sound books to him. He was having nothing to do with it. I think they burn out on that stuff all day and he isn't interested when he is home. We had one of the academic nights that was Reading themed. We rotated through about 3 classrooms where we made site word games to take home. The only problem with that is finding time to do it. But they seem like good games. One was a board game with rolling dice and advancing forward if you could read the word. The other was flipping over letters and trying to make words, and the third game was writing site words on one end of a popsicle stick and pulling them out of a cup and guessing the site word. If you got it correct you got to keep the stick for points. If you got a stick that said "BOOM" then you had to put all your sticks back and start over. I think Mason will like that one. Mason is actually better at his Spanish site words than his English site words. I feel like I have to do something. I feel like we are just robotically doing homework and not getting anything from it. We are still doing worksheets, and reciting numbers and letter sounds. I don't think it's the content of the homework we just don't spend enough time with it. I think he is ready to be done with it like me. Which is all my fault. He hasn't been as interested in reading at night either. We've read to Mason since he was born and every night since he was 4 months old. Now that the pressure is put on him to read his attitude has altered a bit.

Anyway, every week we get a "Guided Reading" book in his back pack. One week it's an English Book and one week it's a Spanish book. Sometimes we have both. Not sure how the rotation works. But the teacher sent home a CD of a read-a-long for the Spanish books. I think this was to help out the English parents who didn't know how to say the words. It's an audio CD of one of the Dual Language teachers reading each of the Spanish books sent home. I thought that was very clever. I don't need it but it could be useful to Mason maybe. We were told to keep them and send them back the end of the year. I also recently asked the teacher to send me a list of web links to the songs they sing in class. Mason is always singing songs that I wish I knew the words to. Particularly the Spanish songs. She sent me a list. Most were on YouTube.

This week is Math/Technology night. I'm interested to see what they send us home with. Being a Title 1 school they are very resourceful and they strive to be. It's the school goal to get parent input and get them involved and the provide parents with resources to help them help their kids. They offer resources in English and Spanish. Every flyer sent home, every message I get from the school is communicated in both languages. I think Mason is learning Spanish the same way we learn English. Through songs and play and just being around the language. His first Spanish words are the same as his first English words: Colors, numbers, shapes, animals. I once read somewhere that kids born into a bi-lingual home with take longer to speak. It's because they are processing two languages at once. I wonder how that same theory might play into his learning at school. Will it take him longer to read and write because he is trying to process the information twice in two different languages? At what point do I panic if other kids his age is reading before him? Will his Math and Music abilities be more advanced than other kids because his brain is being challenged? All things that will be answered in time I suppose. I just wonder where his reading and writing would be if he had started a non-title 1 school that was primarily pushing English Reading and Writing all day. I usually have good instincts and intuition. Mine tells me to be patient.

I'm going to the school Thursday to read some of my favorite Halloween/Fall books to the kids and give them a treat bag. :) Can't help myself. I hope it goes well. I'm a little nervous to read in front of such a big group of kids. Mason loves his school and his teachers as do I. I'm still very happy about the decision I made. We are only 9 weeks in so I'm not going to be hard on myself. This is my only child. He and I are both learning things for the first time.

As always, thank you for reading and if you have anything you want to know that I'm not talking about please let me know. I may space out my blogs a bit so I don't run short on material.

Here are some links the teacher sent me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsRKoZGaoEM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L26jwqF9Zro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unbPV7l2_vI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99zPboqO3sw
you can search "EL ALFABETO" not sure which one she used. When I printed my email it cut half the websites off. :(

Dios Mio! (My God!) I have been busy. So I skipped I few weeks as I said I would from time to time. If you're just now reading please go back and see my first post. This is a blog about my experience as a parent enrolling my child in a Spanish Dual Immersion program. My son, Mason, is 5 yrs old and in Kindergarten. I am sharing this experience to help inform other parents of what it's like to be involved in a dual language program. I am not an educator or a native Spanish speaker.

We have been some "Busy Bee's". (school mascot). Since my last post it has been: Parent teacher conference, Road Runners events, book fairs, Dr. apts, and a Parent Advisory Council meeting. Fwheeww! I'm tired. Parent teacher conference was easy. It was just 20 minutes of the teacher going over how they test and how well your child is doing or not doing. Mason is meeting and exceeding standards. These are test that were given the first 2 weeks of school and they test again in December. They use a testing system called AIMSweb. It's new. They no longer do CRCT testing. Not sure this is it's replacement or not. I have received so much information the last few weeks no doubt it's all jumbled in my mind. I will try to post a pic of this evaluation for your viewing pleasure. Parent Advisory Council was a meeting I signed up for and didn't really know what it was going to be about but since I'm so involved I didn't care. It is a group of parents who sit down with the principle and some faculty and come up with ideas to improve the school and get other parents involved. This council is a requirement by Title 1 (a school that has 70% or more students on free or reduced lunches) There are 13 schools in our district that are Title 1. So I was given a huge packet of statistics and scores and was told to submit ideas before the next meeting. Ideas such as---What can we do over the Summer to help students and parents continue education, How can we better inform parents about things going on at the school and get them involved, etc. It was kinda like a PTO meeting but different. It was like "Fight Club". The first rule is you don't talk about it. The principle said it takes a special group of people to look at this provided information and see it as a useful tool...something good. She said that some parents would look at it an find 50 things politically incorrect about it. I imagine it's because it had a break down of scores between all the different ethnicity groups. FYI, Caucasian at this school had some of the lowest scores. But this doesn't scare me. You have to consider the balance. I transferred here so I'm obviously an involved parent. I'm going to give my child special attention. The Hispanics at this school, some of them, are pulled from class and given individual instruction. So in the long run they had better scores. I'm happy that they have someone to do that for them. Plus, we were told that GA sees it's self as an English speaking state so they do not recognize dual language programs so all test are in English. So the Hispanics are still going to be at a disadvantage if they don't get extra help in the area. That's all the time I'm going to spend on talking about that. You get the idea I hope.

Mason did 3 Road Runner races. He had fun. I recommend it. If you not ready for team sports and want to slowly get your child used to participation of a sport nature it's the way to go. Time wise it's not demanding. The book fair was good. Not sure if I mentioned it in the last post. Me and another parent donated a large amount of books to the classroom. Being a first year teacher, she was deeply appreciative. And just so you know; book fairs at dual language schools have Spanish books. So I bought a few. Mason doesn't' like me to read them to him he says they are "Too Spanish-y" I thought that was funny. Mason's 5 yr check up was good...a little late, but good. He's healthy!

My favorite event last week was the Hispanic themed Fall Festival. It was the first one in years that the school had done. They usually do a Spring Festival. It was a success. Naturally, I volunteered my time to help set up. In the parking lot there was some games and crafts tables set up for the kids. Mostly tossing a bean bag in some sort of hole, Piñata's, Paper flag making (Papel Picado Banderitas), and homemade maracas. You take a paper plate and fold it in half, pour some beans in it to make the sound, staple it shut, and then decorate it with paint/marker/streamers...whatever. But what was going on inside was the fun part. A local Mexican Restaurant donated the food. There was a Mariachi Band, and many tables set up to eat at. My neighbors made a huge stand up frame that was used for photo ops. There was a table set up about Hispanic culture. The kids had a great time. At first I wondered were the bouncy house was but then I realized it was more of a Spanish heritage festival than a typical fall festival you would see at a school. I loved it! Mason spent most of his time anywhere they had candy. The director of the DL program came up to me at one point and said, "If you had asked me where I was going to be teaching 10 yrs ago I wouldn't have thought I would be here". This was a good statement. I've heard this women say several times how passionate she is about her job and how much she loves every single one of those students and I believe her. I get warm fuzzies knowing that the people that surround my child all day are passionate about what they do. I can only hope some of that will rub off on Mason. I loved the mix of cultures that night. Seeing people together appreciating one another. That's what it was for. I had mentioned in my last post about how I wasn't sure how involved I would get to be with this event because they had a Latina Breakfast. I later learned that the breakfast was necessary to help get the restaurant and mariachi involved with the festival. One of the main goals is to get the Hispanic parents more involved. They want to be but a lot of them feel discouraged because they don't know a lot of English. I think the feeling is mutual. I'm not fluent in Spanish. Half the school or more is Hispanic. So we are working on bringing the two cultures together on mutual ground and opening the lines of communication.

Homework is our biggest obstacle right now. It hasn't changed since the last time I mentioned it. It's still cut and paste, and color the amount of stars that correspond to the number shown. Also, he has to write his site words and numbers. He hates to color. And he hates to write so this is a struggle. I wonder at what point I worry about dyslexia. He wants to write the numbers and letters backwards and I have to always remind him to read left to right. Right now I assume this is normal. Really, he's only been in Kindergarten 2 months. The verbal homework is easy. He will read me his site words and count to 100 in English AND Spanish. So I know the information is there he just doesn't like to write it. I also find the site words funny. In English right now he has words like: it, is, one, in, etc. In Spanish he has a site word that looks like: anaranjado (orange). Believe it or not, he does better with his Spanish site words!!! Once a week she sends home graded work. In class it's the same mundane worksheets we do for homework and they have a different letter they write every week. We made the mistake of letting Mason play the Xbox One over the Summer and now that's all he wants to do. All his other activities have limited. I know...bad parent. So he wants to rush through everything with the goal in mind that he will get to play his Xbox. I won't blame this on the game playing husband because he reads this blog. Love you honey! Ultimately, I'm the one here all week with the kid so it falls on me. I thought limiting it to one hour a day would help but he still wants to hurry through things. I hate to keep saying, "You can't do this because you have school", "You can't play your game you have homework", "You have to turn it off you have Road Runners." I feel like the bad guy and I don't want him to have resentment toward these things. But I'm trying different things. Trying to redirect his attention to educational games on the mobile devices but those get frustrating. Also, the Spanish songs are no stop which make me happy. He still goes around singing songs he learns at school. I know this program is working. So far we are all very happy with it. Mason tells me he loves his school often. He tells me he likes Road Runners. So if a little homework motivation is all we need then I say we are doing pretty good.

So I want to post a video of Mason doing some of his Spanish site word sounds. It's not all of them. Oh, and the video is sideways...sorry about that. My poor iphone video recording skills. I am also going to post some pics of the festival and Mason's parent/teacher conference. I really want to post some of the pics from the festival.

Please let me know if you have a question or just want to know something I'm not covering in my blog. I hope the photos and videos help fill in the gaps. Thank you for reading!